Aachen is a small city that few people are familiar with. It came onto my radar via the German language podcast “Warum Nicht” in which the first 2 series of the radio play style learning show are set in Aachen. The city is strongly associated with Charlemagne who made it is capital (and is buried there), but has roots going past Roman times and is a spa town with natural hot mineral springs. The name Aachen derives from the old Germanic “ahha,” which doesn’t take a linguist to connect to “aqua,” i.e. water.
From prehistory to the middle ages in one dig
Having cracked open the Pandora’s box of a project, I find myself unable to shut the lid on my obsession. So the few days I spent in Aachen were more involved with manipulating data, writing scripts, and application development than any proper tourism. As the travel section of the blog, I needn’t get into any details of what I am working on, but I did manage to get out of the hostel everyday to look around town.
On Friday morning, my desire to hang out in the hostel lobby was slightly thwarted by the malfunction of the hot water dispenser (coin operated coffee machine), so I had to go to a bakery to get a caffeine (and sugar) fix. There was a small Asian boy helping out behind the counter with the two middle aged German ladies. The bakeries are definitely a highlight in Germany, but I feel I gain weight just by looking at the sweets.
Rathause
Midday I set out into town again, taking a wider loop that brought my closer to the historical old town. Craving something cheap for lunch, I looked at a couple of doner restaurants before finding a shopping mall and grabbing Indian curry from the food court. Since I was at the mall, I went ahead and checked off the shopping that I needed to do: deodorant from DM (the drugstore) and a cheap pair of earphones from Saturn (the electronics store).
In the evening, I went out to find a Rewe hidden inside a courtyard containing a cineplex and lots of outdoor bars. I picked up a salad mix and a package of mixed olives, feta, and roasted red pepper/sun-dried tomato sauce to fancy up the salad.
In the morning, I had passed a church advertising a free organ concert in the evening, so I headed out that way after dinner. However, as I was walking up to the church, I saw some people getting turned away at the door because it was already completely full. On second thought, as it was a modern evangelical church, maybe it was for the best. On the way back, after passing the same gelato/frozen yogurt shop for the umpteenth time, I caved in and bought two scoops. It started raining on me when I was a block away from the hostel.
Well, that was a fun month seeing a few countries and a lot of friends, but let’s not forget that my main goal of going to Europe was to gain fluency in German.
Volume 2, Day 57
My one travel hack is to always try to arrange my connections according to the schedules of hostel check-in/checkout while also prioritizing location to minimize the amount of time I have to be lugging my suitcase around. Flixbus has two terminals in Brussels, one of which was a stone’s throw from my hostel, but it made sense–both economically and in terms of departure time–to book the bus leaving from the north train station. Even counting the cost of public transportation, it was a couple euro cheaper, and I was able to stay in the hostel until a few minutes before the 10am checkout time.
With an 11:35 bus departure, I had plenty of time. In an alternate universe where I was traveling light, I would have even considered walking the less than 3 km distance across town, but I certainly got an adventure out of the Brussels subway system. The ticket machines only accepted credit card or coins, and it turns out I was about 40 cents short of 2.10 single ride ticket. So, I hauled my suitcase back up the flight of stairs and up the block to the first fruit seller, where I bought a can of (lemon) Fanta in order to break a 5 euro note.
When I got back to the machine and purchased my ticket (with exact change), I noticed there was a handful of coins in the coin return tray. More than a handful, really. I didn’t count, but there was at least a dozen 5 and 10 cent pieces. In other words, the fates had provided me a way to avoid the little side trip, but I wasn’t paying attention. I felt guilty about pocketing the windfall, so I popped halfway up the stairs and deposited the coins in the paper cup of the beggar who had been sitting there all along, also blissfully ignorant of the old practice of checking public telephones for loose change.
What decade is this?
The subway system was laid out just like a streetcar system, but moved underground with the minimal amount of architecture to keep the roof from caving in. To get from one platform to the other, one simply crossed the tracks at the provided crosswalk, looking both ways down the spacious tunnels.
I alighted at Gare Nord (Fr: north station) and looked around for somewhere to eat an early lunch. The KFC was still serving breakfast, and the other dozen eateries were basically just selling croissants or sandwiches. I wanted something a bit heartier, but by the time I made a full loop, the KFC had already switched over to the lunch menu. I’ve been craving fried chicken for a while, so it was nice to scratch that itch with a box meal. One interesting quirk worthy of some Tarantino dialogue is that you have to buy the sauce separately for something like 20-30 cents for a standard sized packet. It’s so unamerican.
The bus left from just outside the station and it was a fairly uneventful ride. I passed through Liege (for the second time) and I still think it is a spiffy looking train station (with a giant Rubik’s cube in front), but harbor no regrets about otherwise skipping it. After a 20 minute break at a highway rest stop with one of those restaurants that span the highway, the driver asked us to ready our passports for a border control check that ultimately did not exist. For some reason, the driving route detoured through a section of the Netherlands in order to enter Germany instead of just heading due east from Liege.
When I got dropped off in Aachen, it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, and again I was a 2+ km distance from my destination, exactly on the opposite side of the otherwise small town. I walked two blocks to the west station to catch a RE train to the Hauptbahnhof, from which my hostel was only 50 meters away.
This was my first time staying at an A&O Hostel, an ultracorporate budget chain whose motto is “Travel for All.” It was significantly better than the Generator Hostels. Though they sold snacks and drinks, they didn’t ban outside food and it was more cosmopolitan than a full on party hostel. Of course, I had to pay extra for sheets. I wonder if this is a Germany only thing. I didn’t stay at too many hostels over the last month, but none of them had charged for sheets.
It was a pleasant surprise to find myself in a four bed dorm (when I was expecting 10) with en suite bathroom (including a small foot towel with the shower). The elevator advertised a guest kitchen in the basement, but I found just a locked room. So, I won’t be cooking for myself these days. One other interesting thing about the A&O hostels is that the prices are always changing, as can be seen from the television monitor above the reception. Not just an uptick for the weekend, but a real time adjustment based on occupancy rates (I infer from seeing it change throughout the day).
Having checked in and changed to more comfortable clothing, I headed over to the nearest supermarket — a discount place, but not a brand I am familiar with — to get a bottle of mineral water. I almost cried from joy at the sight of the prices in Germany, so much more affordable than Benelux, France, or England. You seriously can’t beat 19 cents for a 1.5 liter bottle of sparkling mineral water.
After working on my computer for a bit and making a cup of coffee (using the free hot water from the otherwise paid coffee vending machine), I went out to a shopping part of town to look around a bit. I have a bit of shopping to do (deodorant and earphones), but I wanted to do some comparison pricing. At an Aldi Sud, I picked up a salad mix, loaf of bread, and a bottle of balsamic vinegar (to commit to eating more salads), then returned to the hostel to eat my simple meal.
In my dorm, there were two kids from Central Asia (Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, respectively) who were in German for a monthlong summer program. What was interesting is that we chatted to each other through German. It can be easier, especially if you are not so advanced, to communicate with other non-native speakers, who are more likely to use the canned “standard” textbook phrases.
I settled into my top bunk and picked my entertainment option for the next week or so–I’m finally going to watch “Freaks and Geeks”–and tried to go to bed early. It is definitely late summer, and I am moving south again because the sun was setting around 9pm.
It felt amazing to wake up after a full nights sleep and I enjoyed the quiet morning over a leisurely breakfast and productive work session. As I was packing up to check out before noon (!), the owner mentioned to me that he was also going to Brussels in the afternoon and would be happy to give me a lift. I readily accepted and after moving my luggage out of the dorm, settled down to kill three more hours before out departure.
Since I was partially sure that my next hostel wouldn’t have a kitchen, I made sure to cook a lunch and work on dwindling down the leftover groceries (pasta, olives, pesto). I have started working on a project, and it is occupying more and more of my mental bandwidth. It’s a good thing I am heading to Germany soon, where I can shift gears to less active tourism.
It was finally time to go, and I was surprised to discover that my ride was an orange Ford pickup truck. You certainly don’t see many of those around Europe! The hostel owner is a pretty interesting guy. He’s been in the business for ten years and despite being caught up in the daily stresses still manages to convey the laid back vibe of The Dude. It didn’t take long to reach Brussels, but the traffic in the capital city was nightmarish. Rather than just dropping me anywhere, I was very kindly delivered to the location of my hostel, near the Midi Gare.
The neighborhoods around train stations tend to be rather colorful and this was no exception. I’m just going to call it little Morocco without any substantial basis. One street radiating out from the train station housed a carnival that stretched at least a mile in the narrow median. Some rides swooped out over the roadway and I wouldn’t be surprised if an extra tall bus or truck lost some paint from the roof.
I never bothered crossing the street to walk up or down the carnival
My hostel was cheap and clean, but fairly characterless. After checking in at the lobby/cafe, I went around the corner to the entrance of the hostel and up two flights of stairs. The dorm room was spacious and had a fairly immaculate en suite bathroom. The open windows caught the breeze and kept the air fresh and cool. There was a guy from Brazil chilling on one bed with his smartphone and I chatted briefly with a Welsh guy who came in a little later. I regret choosing a lower bunk because there wasn’t much headspace.
Since the weather was fine and I had hours of sunlight remaining, I decided to explore a bit of Brussels and start crossing off tourist attractions. The first stop was Mannekin Pis, small fountain of a little boy peeing. There is a famous story of a town celebrating a recent victory in battle, but the enemies secretly put a bomb under the city hall. A little boy discovers it and uses his urine to put out the fuse. I read it in a Chinese textbook and having not actually paid attention to the where and when, had been keeping my eyes open for the statue commemorating the event. Et voila.
Mannekin Pis
The fountain is just south of the Grand Plac (Groot Markt), a central square surrounded by grand gothic looking buildings. I would call it the heart of tourist Brussels as all the streets and alleys in the vicinity are full of shops peddling souvenirs, chips, waffles, and chocolates. It was a bit touristy and crowded, but refreshing to see somewhat reasonably priced cafes competing through their daily menus (under 20 euros!) on signboards. Though significantly cheaper than Bruges, I still wasn’t about to spring for a fancy dinner, but it was nice to see nonetheless and planted some seeds in my mind.
One corner of the plaza
Coming across a supermarket, I popped in to buy a big bottle of mineral water, a baguette, and some cheese. I carried those back to the hostel and finished off the last of my olives and pesto in a hearty calorie packed dinner. Though it was still light out, I just hung out in the room for a bit until I was ready to sleep.
The mysterious roommate woke up at the crack of dawn, packed silently and left, as if it was a normal thing to only spend the hours of 12-7am in a hostel. Of course, the worse part, which I failed to mention previously is that the windows had been shut all night. The room has a tendency to get really stuffy and the air quality is downright bad. But, if the windows remain open, the loud conversations of the all hours bar immediately below waft in as if on a PA system. That’s why I carry earplugs, but the sleeping figure got to determine the standard without discussion.
Since it wasn’t raining any more and even looked like the streets had dried out a bit, I decided to get in a morning run — a 9 km route circling the city via the main waterways. It was good and the other couple had also checked out by the time I returned from the exercise. I showered, packed up, and was eager to get out of the room and somewhere else.
I dragged my suitcase over to a bus stop and rode to the same train station I had passed on my morning jog. It took longer to wait for and ride a bus than it would have been to just walk (with a backpack), but such are the tradeoffs for this giant suitcase. I had to queue at the ticket window in order to buy a train ticket in cash, but I was pleasantly surprised by the reasonableness of the price (6.6 euros, no extra charges). There was a train about once an hour and I decided to wait for the next train and get a coffee.
It was a pleasant ride to Gent-Sint-Pieter on the local train. The train was clean and I had an entire car to myself. The station looked unfinished as I got off the train and the area in front of the station was somewhat deserted. It was also surprisingly chilly. I had been researching the costs/benefits of springing for a Ghent City Pass in order to see a couple of the sights and get free rides on buses/trams, but I couldn’t find a tourist information point anywhere in or near the station. So, I simply followed the directions of Google Maps and waited for the bus which would drop me off about a block away from my target hostel on the opposite side of the city (again!). It was also 3 euros for a fair short bus ride.
I was dropped much closer than I expected and found the hostel to be very nice. The owner was full of tips and after lugging my suitcase up two flights of narrow stairs, I found a spacious, clean, modern looking 6-bed dorm with a fire escape/balcony. After chatting a few minutes with my Indonesian roommate, who was also helping out at the hostel, I popped over to a supermarket to grab some lunch, including some snacks and a cold beer.
I ate, took a nap, had a coffee and a snack, then finally got ready to go out exploring the city.
Disneyland
It was the last day of a 10-day long festival that is held every summer. It is apparently a big deal, with the entire city center being included in the festival. I set off to explore and saw more things than I can describe, but overall it reminded me of the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin. There were stages of various sizes scattered about town with live music, squares converted into dance floors, food trucks selling overpriced junk food outnumbered by beer sellers 4-1 using “regional” refillable glasses (i.e. have to return to the right part of town to get deposit on glass back). All the bars and street side cafes were packed to the rafters while street performers squatted on every corner and one plaza was turned into a full-on carnival with bumper cars and other amusement park rides. I poked my head into a Carrefour Express next to the carnival and saw that their fridge was understocked and overpriced.
I popped into a church to find it converted into a beer hall with a “Last Supper” platter of bar snacks. The alcoves of the church were filled with grotesque sculptures juxtaposed with objects of worship through a separate ongoing art exhibit.
“Church,” by Guillermo del Toro
In another corner of town, I took a turn and found myself in front of a medieval castle and another plaza with a stage of music. I ducked into a corner store to get some liquid courage to get me through this nightmarish acid trip of a festival. Along a major canal, I found what I would call the main stage 30 ft tall scaffolding with big screens, a narrow band of a mosh pit between the stage and the canal with a bar area opposite the canal.
As interesting as the festival was, I definitely needed to get in touch with some other people to make the experience more memorable. So, I pulled out Couchsurfing to check on who was available for the “Hangout” feature. It actually worked and I met up with one guy from Pakistan who lived in the outskirts of Ghent. After walking around a bit we camped out in front of the McDonald’s as one after another couchsurfer coalesced into a group. It took a while and there were a few aimless loops around to kill time as people made their way to the rendezvous point. The whole process was quite torturous as I had finished my beer and was tapping my foot to get another one.
Eventually, the group was complete and I wasn’t the only person down to get a drink. We worked our way from Nachtwinkel (Night Shop, a.k.a. Belgium’s version of convenience stores) grabbing their overpriced (but still more affordable than from the stalls) drinks. It was a motley group covering a few continents and much of the time was spent making introductions and coordinating with more people joining in. One of the girls, a recent PhD graduate, was hungry and we spent a while looking for food, even once going into a church that was converted into a food court. The food prices were still unreasonably and I was grateful for my late and filling lunch.
They only come out at night
Altogether, there were three people locally based, but all transplants from different countries and four proper travelers (myself included). That local knowledge was useful in knowing where the next nachtwinkel would be, but we did spring for a drink at a proper cafe once so that we could sit down a while.
Lights, Canal, Stage
The group split up as some people wanted to stay for a circus-like musical performance at one stage, while the “place to be” at that hour was a different stage. After going to the canal-side stage, I realized I had hit my limits on beer as a glass of beer was placed into my hands. After downing it quickly, I slipped away to get a big bottle of water and something more energetic to keep the party going. I was barely paying attention to the performance, but noting the time, I reminded our diminutive tour guide of the mardi gras party. It was a mardi gras experience with an effectively naked master of ceremonies standing on a stage tossing beads out into the crowd while shouting “show us your titties” into the mike. We seemed to have missed the most of it, and my age was catching up with me. When one later member of the group bowed out with the excuse of having to catch an early train the next day, I also peaced out and took a roundabout way back to the hostel.
The good thing about Ghent is that it is pretty small and difficult to get lost. I gave a wide birth to the park in the corner, closest to the hostel because that is supposedly where the late night DJs do their thing and I was ready to get out of the crowds.
My three roommates were up and packing at the crack of dawn leaving me with a room to myself to sleep in, if I so desired. There was no compelling reason to get up because the hostel didn’t have any common spaces to hang out or a tea kettle that I could use to make coffee. So, I just lounged in bed with my laptop.
One of dozens of UNESCO world heritage belfries in Belgium
The sky was gray and the weather report predicted a bit of rain in the morning and again in the evening. I eventually got myself out of bed to go wander around Bruges a bit and see the city in the daytime. By my research, I was on the fence about whether it would be worth getting a city pass and trying to cram all the museums and historic buildings into a day. My outdated travel book said the pass was cheaper than the main art museum and the bell tower, so I went to have a look at the museum.
It turns out Bruges has a case of tourism inflation with prices double those quoted in my guidebook. While I wouldn’t have minded paying 15 euros or so to see a dozen sites, the city pass was a whopping 28 euros with the Belfort and museum costing 12 euros a piece (12 euros to climb some stairs or see a handful of paintings). Insanity. Or, I guess I got a bit spoiled by London.
Canals
Abandoning the idea of doing any real sightseeing, I continued to stroll through the town keeping my eyes open for a cheap restaurant to eat in at some point and pricing supermarkets. I had the notion of making a picnic and watching the concert again in the evening.
I stumbled across a market on the west side of town and discovered a competitive industry of roasted chickens. Columns of chickens on rotisserie spits rotate high up in the air. After a quick stop at a coffee cart and a bakery cart to have my breakfast, I went to buy a chicken because I simply couldn’t pass up the offer. I carried my 1.2 kg chicken (!) and bag of roasted baby potatoes over to a yard in front of a church and sat down for a impromptu picnic lunch. I could barely finish half the chicken.
The elaborate edifices are the raison d’etre
I headed back to the hostel afterwards to wash up and take a nap. It was drizzling when I decided to head out again in the afternoon. It seemed to be pretty light, but as soon as I was in the streets the rain steadily grew in size. It was still a bit warm so I was without a rain jacket and I had abandoned my broken umbrella after Japan. I took refuge in a church which was no longer a church. The entrance way was full of a series of rainbow colored curtains with single words written on them. There was a giant swing hanging from the ceiling and a large pit where people threw paper airplanes. In one corner, there was a self-service cafe with a proper coffee machine. I helped myself and plopped a coin in the jar.
I sat for a while in this unique cafe and began to properly brainstorm some of the ideas that have been percolating in my head the past couple of weeks. I’m a bit frustrated with the language learning experiment because I can clearly see the inefficiencies in my methodology, but I lack the tools to learn better. This means I need to build my own system from scratch, and given my expertise and data in Chinese, I should design the system for that language.
Homeless Jesus — Belgian churches are socially conscious and artistic
The rain didn’t look like it would ever let up, but I needed to use the restroom so I made my way back to the hostel. It was pretty nice that I had a room to myself, so after getting out of my wet clothes, I settled back into bed and put a movie on. Since it didn’t seem like I would get to see much of Bruges in real life, I decided to rewatch “In Bruges.” It was brilliant and I would seriously suggest anyone just watch the movie and skip the city. All the sites are there in the film and presented much more artistically and with fewer tourists than the “real” experience.
Must be a famous moon, showed up three times in the movie
It was nearly 6pm and the rain was still steadily filling the air with threads of damp. I had maybe an hour before the shops would close, which presents an interesting question. What is better: Belgium where the shops are open every day but close at 7pm or Germany where the shops are closed on Sundays but normally stay open until 9 or 10 pm? Ever the optimist, I made a beeline for a more distant (but better stocked) Carrefour Express with the leftover chicken and picnic blanket in tow. I was pretty wet by the time I made it to the market where I picked up a salad and a couple bottles of refrigerated local beer.
Since it was out of the question to enjoy my meal al fresco, I went back to the hostel, squeezing my way through the packed downstairs bar to the back stairs to go upstairs. I didn’t relish the idea of eating in the room (call it a principle of mine), but luckily I still had the place to myself so I guess I could get away with it under the special circumstances. I sat on the unsafe window ledge watching a couple of Youtube videos during my meal, and after finishing my third and final beer, went and laid back down on bed with another movie.
Not long after the movie finished and when I was both congratulating myself on my good luck while thinking about going to sleep, two roommates showed up in the room. An Italian guy and a Turkish girl had had a rough couple of days, traveling without plans or arrangements and getting completely soaked in Brussels. They were very talkative and convinced me to go out with them for one beer–“the best beer in Belgium.”
It was a bit of an adventure, trying to find an open cafe at 11pm. The bars were still going strong, but that wasn’t what we were looking for. We also had to stop to take lots of photos and go track down Belgian fries first, but we had one beer at a cafe and got back a bit after midnight. There was someone sleeping in the room and I was absolutely perplexed as to how he managed to secretly check in when I had been in the room 80% of the day.
I made a grocery run in the morning to try to finish off all my coins before I left England, but that was somewhat unsuccessful as I had 3.57 but remembered it as 3.6 while I was doing the math on different yogurts, protein bars, etc. After cancelling an item I was still stuck with a handful of coins that may be worthless soon.
After checking out, I should have plopped down in the lobby for a bit, especially as I had a number of tasks to do on my computer, but its hard to work in only ten minute increments and I was feeling anxious for my bus ride to the continent. So, I headed out into the slightly drizzly weather to catch the Circle Line around to Victoria (Coach) Station. While waiting for the Tube, I received a message from Flixbus saying that my bus would be delayed by an hour and a half. I kicked myself for not just hanging out five minutes to get that message.
I was still waiting for the subway when an announcement came over the intercom. The Circle Line was broken. Garrr…. It wasn’t a huge deal to reroute, but still an inconvenience. The coach station was a pretty good walk from the Underground and the bus port I needed was on the far other side of the station. All along the way, I had to dodge the swarming masses of people who don’t know how to either walk or get out of the way. Knowing I had a long wait in front of me, I found a spot by the wall and sat on my picnic blanket. It occurred to me that I had also forgotten to update my podcasts and let’s just say that the occasional Wi-Fi signal I could get from a bus throttled the connection at a few kbps. Eventually, I asked a girl sitting next to me to watch my suitcase a minute and I went over to the Starbucks to use their Wi-Fi.
I chatted with a girl a bit when I returned. She had landed in London yesterday from Columbia for a week long course. I’m still questioning what prompted her to pick Bruges for a 2 day excursion before the course properly began. When the bus finally arrived, we got separated in the boarding procedure, but she saved me a seat.
There is a law of nature that a long journey feels much longer if the outset is delayed. I swear we spent at least two hours in street traffic and only approached highway speeds when London was just a distant memory. It was a bit of a mystery to me how we were going to cross the channel on a bus, but all was revealed in time. The eurotunnel (aka channel tunnel aka chunnel) runs from near Dover to near Calais. It is solely a train tunnel, most famous for the Eurostar highspeed train connecting London and Paris, but most of the time there is a shuttle service moving cars, trucks, buses and more than 2 million pets to date.
At what looked like a shopping mall with tons of numbered parking lots surrounding a central building, the bus dropped us off to walk through passport control. We had an hour to kill and I wandered into the terminal containing duty free shops, fast food chains, and a band playing on the stage in the central food court. An information terminal showed that all “boarding groups” were delayed. I queued for a Starbucks and ended up with even more coins when I broke a 5 quid note.
Back on the bus, we drove 100 meters to a second passport control, which took slightly more time to pass than a quick swipe of the passport through the machine. We were technically entering France on British soil. The bus drove around the rail yard and followed the directed path onto a cargo train. In front of us were several RVs and other large passenger vehicles. The cars and semi trucks were loaded separately somewhere else. I cannot imagine trying to drive up onto a train car angling just perfectly not to scrape against the sides. It didn’t help the claustrophobia that we were a double decker bus.
En empty carriage
I think the vehicles were secured in place and plastic gates emerged from the walls to separate the train into compartments. After an nearly interminable wait, the whole apparatus began shaking gently and I can only presume we were off. The cargo train was lit gently and I exited the bus to have a look around and use the restroom at the far end of the train. The first and last cars are left empty and only used for loading/unloading traffic. I couldn’t make anything out through the small porthole windows, but we were rumbling our way under the English Channel.
The journey took about 30 minutes and we emerged in France straight onto a highway. Given the lateness of our bus, our driver was noticeably anxious and made an error at the scheduled stop in Lille (or wherever in France). We had to turn around and go back because we missed some people…though we didn’t actually. It was another 45 minutes to Bruges.
Bruges, or Brugge in Flemish (Dutch?), is the best preserved medieval town in Belgium. After getting dropped off, the Colombian girl and I passed through the train station to the city side. It was a bit of a tossup as to how to get to my hostel, on the other side of town. I wouldn’t mind walking 2 km, but not with luggage over cobblestones. My new friend had a much closer hostel, but we decided to try a bus which passed by both of our locations. Since she only had a 50, I spotted the bus fare.
The bus was so fast, I actually missed my stop and got off one later next to a canal where some kids were swimming from a platform. I did my best to carry my luggage over the bumpy streets around the corner and over a bridge to find my hostel–Charlie Rockets.
Instead of being a hostel with a bar, it was a bar with a hostel. A very popular and busy bar. It took some time to flag down an employee to get checked in and every time I went in or out, I would have to squeeze between packed tables of drinkers. I popped a look at the menu and was shocked. The beer prices were somewhat reasonable, but I wasn’t expecting to see pizzas and pastas going for 14-18 euros.
I guess I had been upgraded to a four-person dorm because I thought I had booked a 6-person. It was just as well because the price also magically increased by 2 euros from what was quoted online. The room was a bit cramped, but there was a private sink and the showers and toilets were just across the hall. Though the heat wave had passed, the interior rooms were still sauna levels of hot. I threw open the windows to try to cool the room down and changed into shorts to go out and have a look around town.
Reaching the first plaza (in front of the city hall), I saw a stage being set up and looking closely at the schedule, I was shocked to find that The Proclaimers were scheduled to play at 10pm with an opening act at 8:30. I needed a bit of food, but because of the bus delays, I missed the 7:30 pm closing time of the Carrefour Express. Checking out the menus of cafes, mains averaged in the 20s. Even the “immigrant” shops (Chinese, Indian, etc) were charging 10 euros for a simple meal. Everything was so expensive. I did find several gelato shops, which were comparatively cheap compared to London, so I ended up just eating ice cream for dinner. It was really good.
The Antler King
The opening act–The Antler King–was already playing by the time I found my way back to the stage. As it was not crowded, I worked my way up close to the stage. I liked the music. It was a duo which used loop machines to create complicated slightly psychadelic, mostly instrumental tunes. After they finished and some people left, I found myself right up front against the railings.
The Proclaimers were a lot of fun. Despite being solidly middle aged and conveying a real “dad” vibe, they brought their A-game. Their roadie was a real interesting character. He was the spitting image of Kurt Russel and while doing the initial setup, he would pull down the reading glasses he wore as a crown. During the show, I could see him quietly singing along while tuning guitars or otherwise prepping for the next song. He exhibited more “cool” than any of the actual band members.
The Proclaimers
Though I only know the one hit song (their show closer), I fulfilled my duty of being right up front by visibly rocking out. To my right, a red haired girl was also really into the music. Beyond her, there was a guy in glasses who just leaned against the railing, smoking cigarettes and looking profoundly bored. On my left, there was an older couple, the female half of which systemically pushed me out of my place by systematically dancing in my general direction.
After the show, I headed back to the hostel to find my three roommates snuggly tucked away in bed.
The heat wave reaches London with temperatures predicted to reach into the 30s on Tuesday and Thursday, but when I awake in the morning the dorm is as cold as an icebox. The A/C–necessary evil of the Anthropocene era–is a lifesaver. I guess I had sprung for the slightly higher booking price to get the included breakfast, which helped me save money as I could pig out in the morning, but the spread was nothing special–toast and cereal with two machines doling out liquids that can only questionably be called juice or coffee.
At 9am, after eating my fill, I crossed Hyde Park to the area south of Prince Albert Hall and the Imperial College to visit the collection of museums, i.e. the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Victoria and Albert. Despite a somewhat leisurely walk, I still reached the NHM about 5 minutes before its opening time and was floored to see the crowds queued up out the door. The adjacent Science Museum also had a sizable crowd waiting to get in. I guess it makes sense that tourists will avail themselves of the free museums, but sometimes I like to think that the hoipoloi are too busy shopping or spending money on tours to be bothered by soaking up any knowledge or culture.
So lifelike!
The NHM was underwhelming overall. The earth science parts were okay, explaining plate tectonics (volcanos! earthquakes!), rock formation, and with comprehensive displays on minerals, but the life sciences sections were both too crowded and sparse. I could barely tolerate the crowds in the dinosaur section and passed through the hallways with various taxidermied animals quite quickly.
Exiting the museum, I headed over to the Imperial College, where a farmer’s market was taking place on the “quad” (or Queen’s Green in the local parlance). After much heming and hawing over the selections, I opted for a Steak and Ale pie, served on mashed potatos and with onion gravy. It was massive and tasty and affordable.
Nourished, I headed to the V&A next and found it overwhelming. One full day would not be enough to see all the exhibits in the V&A (not even including the several special exhibitions with their own fees). The layout of the museum doesn’t lend itself to a natural course, so I just did my best to wander about without worrying about missing anything. I mostly just took in the displays visually without worrying too much about reading the signs explaining historical context, which with “decorative arts” is quite important. I would definitely recommend the museum as a must-see.
Finally because it was there and free, I popped over to the Science Museum. I’m of mixed feelings about the quality. I definitely enjoyed the several halls full of old machines, respectively themed around the “creation of the modern age,” the “secret world of the home,” and flight. But, it would be fair to say I was pretty tapped out by that point with my brain incapable of absorbing much additional information.
The actual Watson and Crick DNA model (rebuilt from original pieces)
I headed back to the hostel for a longish rest with coffee, water, and a chocolate orange before it was time to head over to a pub to meet up with my London-based friends. The pub was within walking distance (by my skewed standards). I had spent a little time online trying to look up pub quizzes and was a little worried about the accuracy of the information I found, but the pub was good and crowded. Every inside table not otherwise occupied had a piece of paper reserving it for later, and every outside table was full of people as well. My friend, F, who had been coming to London on business the past six weeks was already there, standing on the corner talking on the phone. We staked out a claim on an otherwise reserved big table and ordered some food. My other friend W, who lives in London fulltime, showed up jsut as the quiz was starting, which made it awkward to catch up.
No malt vinegar
It was a good quiz and we won on a tie breaker. The prize (for our 2 GBP per person entry fee) was a 50 GBP bar credit, usable that day. Unfortunately, we had individually paid for a couple of drinks, so we didn’t maximize the value of the winnings and I, being the only person drinking, was stuck hanging out at the pub drinking one more than I wanted.
When I got back to the hostel, I noticed that the A/C in the dorm room was not blowing cold air. I popped down to the reception to ask turning it cooler, but they said a request for maintanence had already been filed. I could swear that someone had gotten their hands on the remote and switched it from “cool” to “fan” and that no real maintanence was really required, but I didn’t push the point. I took a cold shower, and went to bed.
It took a while and two breakfasts before I could say my goodbyes and get out of the house on Monday. At the bus stop, I let a couple buses pass me by because I wanted a bus operated by a specific company. In my internet research on how to get to London, there is a bus running between Oxford and London for a cheap price, but the real kicker is that they advertise free local bus travel to get into Oxford to catch their bus. Unfortunately, when I asked the driver for that ticket, he didn’t know how to sell said ticket and I was stuck paying regular full fare.
Disappointed by my failure to secure the cheapest possible travel, I rode the “Park and Ride” bus past the parking lot on the outskirts of Oxford and past central Oxford all the way to the train station. It would be a lot cooler to take a train into London and given the fact that I was off peak, I should be spared the exorbitant commuter rates. Yeah, no. I didn’t want to pay 27 quid for a train ticket, so I walked back to the bus station and took my original 8 pound bus to London.
The bus wound its way east through Oxford picking up additional passengers at stops before getting on the highway. It was a quick two hour journey and we went from sailing along the highway to stopped dead in London traffic in basically the blink of an eye. I alighted at Marble Arch and headed straight into the Tube to buy an Oyster card and catch the Central line two stops over to my low rent hostel.
The neighborhood, north of Hyde Park (Kensington Gardens) and west of Paddington, has a real immigrant vibe to it, but maybe that’s just how London is. In any case, I spotted at least five Chinese restaurants within 50 meters of the Underground exit, which got me wondering how one could scientifically define a Chinatown by ratio of Chinese people, text, or shops.
The hostel consists of two houses in a row of town houses and is just as musty and run down as I expected. Several guests were chilling in the patio between the house and the one way street, and I checked in. The cramped room with 16 beds has lockers under the beds, but the hostel decided it could make more money by installing electronic locks on them and charging a pound a day for guests to use them. That is the most egregious bullshit I’ve seen anyone try. The room is pretty small and there is barely enough room to lay a suitcase down to get anything out of it, so blocking off the valuable under bed real estate is a crime in itself. On the other hand, an air conditioning unit was doing its best to keep the room at a frosty … I’m going to say 18 degrees. A group of Egyptian boys had checked in just before me and promptly went to sleep as soon as they made their beds.
I took a minute in the lobby to liaise with a couple friends I am planning on meeting up with in London, then immediately walked down the street and into Kensington Gardens. I made a beeline for the Serpentine Galleries, and took a walk around the park to check out a few monuments and the public swimming area. Given the fact that a heat wave is striking Europe, it may be worth the four quid (including locker, shower, and sun deck) to go swimming in the lake. In any case, it should be sunny and hot these days, so I am grateful to be back in shorts finally.
My stomach was grumbling while still enjoying the bright sun in the park, so I headed back to grab an early dinner from a supermarket. I had salad, but dressed it up with precooked chicken breast slices (on sale) and a mix of feta and olives. I also bought a lot of water. London is more expensive.
I sat in the interconnect basement common rooms (kitchen, TV room, etc) and ate my meal while doing some travel planning (I’m dying to get back on the continent). After hydrating and allowing a proper amount of time for digestion, I changed into running shorts and did a loop around the parks. Let’s see if I can squeeze in a run every day between museum visits and pub quizzing.
After the run, I showered and sat back in the common room working on my computer for a while. It was after 10pm before I even realized it, and I headed upstairs to lazily scroll through social media a bit and fall asleep.
There was a pretty decent breakfast spread in the morning included with the price of the bed at my Oxford Backpacker’s Hostel, so I rolled out of bed into a leisurely breakfast while catching up on the news. I still needed to make my own coffee since the provided drink was instant — I’d rather drink tea in that case. I don’t really need to list out all the events of the morning, but there were a few details that stick with me. Firstly, there was a table of one, two, and eventually three Americans–all either college students or recent grads–that got into conversation with each other. As always, the sound of Americans chatting cuts through all the ambient noise to attack my brain like a drill and shatter my attention. It didn’t help that one of them was passing through England on his way home form a mission trip in Kenya and kept making extremely evangelical word choices.
The second notable occurrence of the morning was that someone turned the telly on to the morning news, as provided by RT. It was just a bunch of tabloid garbage and I heard them cycle through the same handful of news stories over an hour or two, e.g. the internet response to flamethrowers on drones and the choice of one Florida community to use “Baby Shark” to make the streets more hostile to the homeless. After checking
After checking out, I hung around the lounge for another hour or two to kill time. I was in no rush to reach Woodstock as my friend might not be back until the afternoon. But, eventually, I bored of eavesdropping on the South African fellow monologue at any woman in earshot, and headed out to catch a local bus. Good lord, the buses are expensive. It is weird in Britain that the bus sits at the stop while the driver processes each passenger in turn like a supermarket checkout, and while I appreciate the ability to pay with cash, I do not appreciate the high price of a ticket, especially when I swear I had seen enough adverts on the sides of buses or at bus stops advertising more reasonable rates.
Woodstock is a tiny hamlet of a town about 12 miles north of Oxford and still located within Oxfordshire. The town is probably most famous for housing Blenheim Palace, which happens to be the birthplace of Sin Winston Churchill and the home of the Duke of Marlborough. Not to be confused with a certain smoking cowboy, the current duke showed up to kiss the ass of a particularly small handed, long tied state visitor not so long ago. Anyways, I took a three minute walk around the triangle of streets that made up downtown Woodstock and parked at a cafe to chill out with my luggage. When I was ordering a 2 pound Americano and a 1.5 pound scone, I somehow got up sold on the set with cream and jam while being assured it was more cost effective. The bill came out to over 6 quid, so I’ll be blimeyed if these country folk know how to add. It was a really tasty afternoon tea, and I had just finished shoving it all into my mouth and shifted my attention to the new book I picked up from the hostel book swap (a knockoff Chinese novel), when I got a message from my mate O that they had returned home.
Seriously big scone
I dragged my suitcase the 5 minutes over to their lovely house on the corner in a residential neighborhood and rang the doorbell. If these adventure logs ever get novelized, I suppose I should paint the fuller character portraits of my friends, but for the internet here, I need to be circumspect. I know O and his wife from Beijing, but hadn’t seen him much in the past couple years, and had never met is now 3 year old daughter, who was napping on the couch when I arrived. What follows is mostly just catching up with friends, a home visit.
In the afternoon, the whole family headed over to an annual event called the Mock Mayor. A centuries old tradition in Woodstock, the people gather outside a pub where the is music, games, and the election of a mock mayor who is paraded to the town square in a grand procession and ceremoniously dunked in a brook. The event was very family friendly with face painting, carnival games, tug of war contest, and a magician. The pub had its full selection of food and drinks, but there were a few independent food vendors grilling burgers, baking pizzas, and frying up chips and the event organizers were selling bottles of prosecco and buckets of Pimm’s at bargain rates. The only catch was you had to pay a 1 quid deposit per plastic cup and there was no one available to refund the deposits when we wanted to head home (during the parade) for more snacky, bready goodness.
Back home, I may or may not have spent quality time entertaining a child and reading bedtime stories.
My destination for the day was Oxford. Because I ended up coming to England a day early, I had a day to myself to kill. The rain never let up as the Megabus worked its way north across England. What a miserable place to spend a summer, I don’t know why its so popular. As soon as I got off the bus, I headed over to the hostel I had booked to drop my suitcase for the day. I had several hours to kill before I could check in, and I headed out into the streets to have a look around.
The city is impressive. It’s medieval looking with almost all of the old buildings made of this tan stone. There was a market on a square, mostly selling street food, but I wasn’t quite hungry yet for lunch. I needed to get out of the drizzling weather and get some caffeine in my system. I found the main drag, full of fast food chains, Uniqlo shops, and a handful of money changers. After the minimal amount of price comparison, I changed over a bit more money into pounds to improve the average of my exchange rate then settled into a Starbucks with a venti “filter” coffee. I guess “drip” is an exclusively American term. I was surprised that the Starbucks was no more expensive than McDonalds across the street or any of the other coffee shops I had passed.
There was a spacious upstairs seating area and after a quick trip to the bathroom to put my contacts back in, I settled in for a while on my computer. Most of the guests were kids, probably here for summer camps. At one point, and entire class took over a large table next to me and I eavesdropped on the morale building session lead by their nonnative teacher.
The streets of Oxford are wildly international. It has got the greatest concentration of Asian restaurants I have seen since I left China, and I heard more Chinese on the streets than English. Funny how that works. I go to Germany and all I hear is English, but in England, no one speaks English. I suppose I should have expected Oxford to attract a lot of tourists. It is world famous and all.
By the time the Starbucks started filling up with teenagers bringing in bags of McDonald’s takeout, I decided I needed to get some food. I had priced a few restaurants with displayed menus because I needed to quickly learn what things cost in England. Fast food is 7 pounds, a basic meal around 10 pounds, a 2 course lunch is 14 pounds. So the street food in the market would be a good meal. Now that it was lunch time, the market was fully in swing and there was enough of a break in the rain that one could sit outside without getting wet. I took a long look at all the international food and settled on a stall marked “Goa.” It was great, rice with two vegetable curries (potatoes, dal) and two meat curries. I needed some bread at the end to soak up all the goodness, but alas I didn’t have any.
It was a few minutes until 1:30, but instead of heading straight back to the hostel, I decided to pop into a Tesco to investigate England via the supermarket. Prices looked fairly reasonable overall, though I think the Paris shops certainly created a bias. It is true that the main and most affordable drink is cider, while beers are pretty pricey at 1-2 pounds each. By the way, a Pound buys as many Euros as a Euro buys dollars. So, after getting used to thinking in “dollars” indirectly through Won and Yen, I could remember to add a mental markup on prices in Euros, now I have to do it a second time.
While I was in the shop, I went ahead and bought toothpaste, which I had run out of, some digestive biscuits (for later), and a big bottle of water to encourage me to hydrate since I had not been drinking much water the last few days.
The hostel is a bit rundown, but the staff are friendly and the prices are reasonable. I checked in and immediately went for a nap. Afterwards, I popped in the shower and had myself an afternoon coffee with biscuits. Fully refreshed by this point, I headed back out into the nasty weather to explore the city.
Oxford is quite big and has all the shopping and dining options one could hope for in a bigger city while retaining the charm of a small medieval town. It was nice and the pubs looked pretty inviting. Eventually tiring of the wet, I headed back to the hostel to chill for a while and read, but I got distracted by a movie on the TV in the lounge. When the movie (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2) ended, I ran out to the Tesco to get some stuff for dinner with a 5 pound spending limit. I should have done a salad or something light, but with the weather, I wanted hearty and ended up with a big meal of roasted chicken legs, mashed potatoes, and spinach. These convenience meals, in between a frozen dinner and a fresh meal, are dangerous stuff.
It was a quiet night. I ate my dinner and watched Youtube videos for a while before going back to reading and finishing “The Big Sleep.” I was in bed by 11 and found it strange that although my 12 bed dorm only had 4 residents, we were all crammed together. Okay, its really just that I don’t understand why a guy chose the bed in between two clearly occupied beds and then spread is stuff out so that I had to climb over his suitcase to get to my bed.
So, I definitely lost a lot of value of my money changing Euros to Pounds Sterling, which means the exchange rate I will be using for my accounting here goes 1 pound to 9.98 yuan, while Google lists it as 8.6 today. If only Britain had switched to the Euro.
